Two more books: Weird Lovecraftian takes

Proof there are more things in heaven and hell than HP Lovecraft dreamed of …
I wasn’t at all impressed by Charles Stross’s The Family Trade but I’m glad I tried THE APOCALYPSE CODEX in his Laundry Files series. The “Laundry” is the branch of the UK spy world charged with fighting against the coming armageddon when HPL’s Old Ones finally erupt into this universe, which in this case requires the protagonist to help a pair of freelancers (very well-executed knock-offs of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaize and Willie Garvin) take down an American televangelist who’s under the delusion that he’s going to bring about the Second Coming (suffice to say, Jesus ain’t who’s going to show up). Part of what makes this work is that his depiction of the Laundry bureaucracy is very plausible—lots of rules and regulations, but not to the point it becomes comical.
THE IRON THORN by Caitlin Kittredge is a steampunk horror novel set in an alt.1950s where a terrifying necrovirus has mutated people into ghouls, night-gaunts and other horrors, collapsing civilization. The protagonist, terrified the virus will drive her mad as it did her mother, flees the city of Lovecraft to her father’s spooky old mansion (which reminds me enough of Castle Heterodyne to make me wonder if Kittredge is a Girl Genius fan). Here she discovers that the necrovirus is just government propaganda to cover up the truth about what’s happening to the world … Solidly entertaining, though it may be a while before I get the next volume (the library doesn’t have it so I’ll have to pony up my own money).